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Among the versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, that of MS.F London, British Library, Cotton Domitian A.viii, folios 30-70 is unique in presenting a sustainedly bilingual Latin and Old English text. Unfortunately the end of the manuscript has long been missing, the work breaking off in the annal for 1058. Palaeographical evidence must be invoked to date the manuscript to c. AD 1100. From its script it is clear that it was written at Canterbury: the contents help to demonstrate that the point of origin was the Cathedral priory. ’The F-Chronicle’ is an important part of a complex body of chronicle-literature kept and augmented at Canterbury in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Drawn from an unusual range of sources, it is a witness - in languge and script - to the impact of the Norman régime on the ecclesiastical culture of England and particularly its most important church. The evidence which it provides for the history of the Kentish dialect attests at the same time to the breakdown at Canterbury of the late West Saxon literary standard. In view of its importance in various contexts, one must express surprise that it has never been edited as a whole. MS.Cotton Domitian A.viii, folios 30-70, is a palaeographically difficult manuscript, with many alterations and additions in various hands. It shows an authorial text - a chronicle in the making, one different in conception from the other surviving witnesses. As a preliminary to a new edition in this series, the publisher and general editors have decided to issue a complete facsimile of this interesting book, partly to encourage further study and discussion of its problems and partly as a record of the present state of the manuscript, whose legibility has deteriorated over the past two decades and whose evidence therefore needs to be conserved for scholars’ future use. Dr.DAVID DUMVILLE who discusses all aspects of the manuscript in his introduction, is a Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge.
